Avalanche Sharks

In most shark films, it's pretty easy to stay safe - just don't go in the water. There are a handful of exceptions, however. It's best to stay right off the beach when there are Sand Sharks around, and in this case even travelling up into the mountains won't help you - or so the story goes.

The rather messy framing of Avalanche Sharks makes it difficult to tell if the bulk of the story is meant to be real or a modern (non-urban) legend. This is just one of several shaky pillars supporting a tale that also tries to interweave small town corruption and ancient Native American practices - but what do you expect from a tale of imperilled teens with a star who was the second choice after Brooke Hogan and a slate of extras whose approach to acting would have given Ed Wood second thoughts?

The teens have gathered because this particular mountain location is a popular Spring Break destination. Even though the focus is on skiing, outdoor hot tubs mean there's still plenty of semi nudity, and even inside the tubs no-one is safe because - wait for it - the sharks are also ghosts. They still slice through bodies ably enough, though, and although some of the effects are sub-Atlantic Rim stuff, there's a good deal of spurting blood to provide visual accompaniment to the off-key screaming.

Despite their ghostly powers, these sharks are still obscurely restricted by certain physical barriers, so the stage is set for a series of set pieces in which our human heroes manage to hide for a while before one of them stupidly ventures into danger, prompting the others to follow. There's also some fluffy relationship drama and a lot of shouting by a sheriff determined to keep the slopes open despite everything.

Although much of the CGI work falls flat, there are occasional entertaining set piece deaths here which - let's face it - are the whole reason many genre fans seek out these films. The sheer number of shark attacks is impressive (albeit not quite in Sharknado territory), so as long as you have a few beers and something to talk about in between, this is a passable piece of sharksploitation.